Today, we will talk about something, a cool topic known as technical SEO. Don’t be frightened if it sounds like some big, scary word; let me break it down so you’ll understand it easily.
What is Technical SEO?
How about this? You have a lemonade stand for real, and you want many people to find your stand.
Technical SEO is like making sure your lemonade stand is easy to find, looks great, works perfectly, so everybody would want to visit.
But instead of a lemonade stand, we are talking about websites. Technical search engine optimization is when you make your website work really well so that search engines will find you easily and show you to people looking for what you have.
Why is Technical SEO Important?
Think about playing hide and seek. If you’ve hidden too well, no one will find you, right?
Well, if your website is hard for search engines to find or understand, it is like it is hiding too well. We want to make sure your website is easy to find, just like you would want to be found quickly in hide and seek.
Now, let us talk about some important parts of technical SEO
1. Making Your Website Easy to Explore
Imagine you are in a big toy store. You want to find all the cool toys, right? Well, search engines are like kids in a toy store – they want to find all the pages on your website. We call this “crawlability.”
To make your website easy to explore, you can
- Make sure all your pages link to each other in a way that makes sense
Let’s say you have a cooking website with these main sections:
- Recipes
- Cooking Tips
- Kitchen Tools
Good linking:
- In your Recipes section, you might link to related Cooking Tips.
- In your Kitchen Tools section, you could link to Recipes that use those tools.
- Your homepage would have clear links to all main sections.
- Make a unique map of your website (an XML sitemap) that will help search engines find everything.
For example, your cooking website has grown and now has hundreds of recipes.
Why it helps,
- Without a map, search engines might miss some of your newest or less-linked recipes.
- But with a sitemap, you are saying to search engines, “Here is of ALL my pages on the website”.
- Use simple web addresses (URLs) that are easy to read and understand
Bad URL: www.mycookingsite.com/page23749.html
Good URL: www.mycookingsite.com/recipes/chocolate-chip-cookies
2. Making Your Website Super Fast
Have you ever waited for a slow computer to start up? Not fun, right? People don’t like slow websites either. Making your website fast is super important.
- Use smaller images that load fast.
- Get rid of stuff that you do not need on your website.
- Use special computer tricks to make things load faster
Cool tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you see how fast your website is and give you ideas to make it faster.
3. Making Your Website Look Good on Phones
Many people browse websites on their phones. Therefore, your website must appear well on a small phone and a large computer monitor “mobile-friendly.”
Google really appreciates websites that are mobile-friendly. In fact, they mostly consider how your website looks on a phone when choosing where to rank your website on search results. In this manner, it is vital to have a mobile-friendly site.
4. Keeping Your Website Safe
Just like you lock your house to ensure that it is secure, we also need to secure websites as well. We do this by using something called HTTPS. It is like a special lock for your website that keeps all the information safe when people visit.
When your website is safe, the search engines approve of it and this makes them rank it higher. Also, visitors are more comfortable using your website because they are assured that their information is secure.
5. Helping Search Engines Understand Your Website Better
Sometimes, search engines need a little extra help to understand what your website is all about. We can give them this help by using something called “structured data” or “schema markup.”
It’s like putting labels on everything in your room. If you label your toy box “TOYS,” your parents know exactly what is inside without having to look. Structured data does the same thing for your website – it tells search engines exactly what each part of your website is about.
6. Avoiding Confusing Duplicate Stuff
Imagine if you wrote the same story in your notebook twice. That would be confusing, right? Well, search engines get confused if they see the same content on different pages of your website.
To fix this, we can
- Use special tags to tell search engines which page is the main one (called a canonical tag)
- You have to make sure only one version (like choosing between www.yourwebsite.com and yourwebsite.com) of your website is available.
7. Making Your Website’s Code Nice and Tidy
The code of your site is like its skeleton – it holds everything together. Making sure this code is clean and tidy helps search engines understand your website better. It is like having neat handwriting – it is much easier to read.
We need to make sure the structure of your site makes sense. It should be easy for both people and search engines to find their way around.
8. Using Some Cool Advanced Tricks
There are some extra special tricks we can use to make your website even better
- Lazy loading This is like only opening your toy box when you need to play with something, instead of dumping all your toys out at once. It makes websites load faster.
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) This is a special way to make web pages super fast on phones.
- Choosing the right place to host your website This is like picking the perfect spot for your lemonade stand – it can make a big difference.
